


Through the Looking Glass

by keepitmythy



Series: Unqualified Heroes [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergance, F/M, Flashbacks, Gen, Good Guy Quentin Beck, Grief, oneshots
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-08-23 20:11:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20210488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keepitmythy/pseuds/keepitmythy
Summary: A series of oneshots in no particular order intended to expand on and explain the alternate Quentin Beck’s backstory, as well as other alternate versions of characters from the main universe.This is intended to be a companion piece to my Unqualified Heroes series, so if you haven’t read The Other Quentin Beck I’d recommend it.Updates sporadically when I have something to put here, not kept to a specific update schedule like the main storyline





	1. Introductions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m going to be posting little snippets of what life on Beck’s Earth was like here. Some (probably the majority) will feature Beck, but there will also be some introducing the alternate versions of major characters from the MCU.
> 
> I’m gonna be posting more info on the organization and history of the battalions in the DVD extras for The Other Quentin Beck, but the tldr of that is that each Sorcerer battalion is organized into seven squads of seven members, six of which are named after colors and the seventh of which (the highest ranked) is referred to as “Star Squad.” Cape designs are also used as a quick way in battle to identify other Sorcerers.

Tony Stark had a good thing going. Make armor for the Battalions, get paid to create new gadgets to keep the world’s heroes safe, and sometimes even take them for a spin.

There were the bad days, of course, but everyone had those in Tony’s line of work. There was the days that the boxes came in with scrapped pieces of armor to salvage and you knew (everyone knew what that molten armguard or crushed chestpiece meant when it came back to the Stark Industries labs) that the person who had worn that armor was also most likely in a box.

But there were also the good days, Tony’s favorite days, when a representative of a Star Squad would come in to test out the latest tech. And boy did Tony have some tech to test. He hadn’t gotten the nanite armor to work yet (he suspected that was still a few years out before it would be battle ready) but by his reckoning he’d gotten the power channeling tech to work a whole fifteen percent more efficiently than the last iteration.

And although the world might believe that the Elemental threat was gone, Tony didn’t get to where he was by allowing himself to fall into a false sense of security. If the Elementals really were gone, than he’d happily switch production to clean energy, or hospital beds and baby bottles. But for now? For now it was making the latest weapons and armor for the defenders of the world.

“Tony? Your three o’clock is here.” Even after nearly five years of working together, Tony still flinched as Natasha Romanoff, his assigned Enhanced bodyguard, seeming appeared out of nowhere beside him.

Tony nodded, matching step with her as they made their way towards the elevator leading down to the Stark Industries high security labs. “They already down there?”

“Security brought him down ten minutes ago. Apparently they lost Rutledge two weeks ago, so Graysmith got promoted and they sent their new Seventh as the errand boy.” Nat sent the relevant information to Tony’s tablet, and he swiped through, absentmindedly reading the new guy’s service record.

The elevator dinged. Tony finished reading the guy’s service record (poor guy, shittier life than most could claim even these days) just as the elevator door opened. The Sorcerer was standing at the far end of the lab room, experimentally poking at the breastplate currently on a mannequin. 

“Hey!” The Sorcerer turned abruptly, almost knocking the mannequin down in his hurry to look like he wasn’t touching it. Tony sighed, looking away until he had successfully righted the armor and moved away from it, trying to look nonchalant. “You’ll have plenty of time to touch it all you want when you’re testing it out. What’s your name, man?” Tony stick his hand out to the Sorcerer, waiting for him to make a move as Nat circled around him, taking up her normal post on the kind sofa at the left side of the room.

The Sorcerer approached, doing his best to look confident while his eyes betrayed just how nervous he was. “Ah, Beck. Seventh Beck. Seventh Quentin Beck. And you’re Tony Stark! Wow! Your armor is just, it’s just really impressive.” Beck took Tony’s hand, shaking it for longer than was probably socially acceptable before pulling back. 

Tony took a moment as the younger man pulled back to take him in. Despite looking both nervous and excited, he still managed to exude the same power and conviction that every Sorcerer he had everworked alongside displayed. His hair was a little longer than the standard buzz cut, bit of a beard (Tony approved, it wasn’t as nice as his own but he could respect good facial hair), but Tony remembered that Sorcerers in the Star Squads tended to have a little more freedom when it came to their appearance. The guy was probably just starting to take advantage of that 

But there was one thing that was common to every Sorcerer that Tony had ever encountered, and Beck was no different. There was that haunted look in their eyes, the dark circles, the flinches at every unexpected sound. Tony reached up to pat Beck on the back and steer him towards the armor, impressed to notice that as jumpy as the man seemed, he managed to suppress his flinch. “Alrighty then, Q, can I call you Q?”

“Uh, yeah, Mister Stark, that’s fine-“

“Please, I call you Q, you call me Tony, everyone’s happy. I see you already found the armor?” Beck looked sheepish as Tony gave him a slight push towards the mannequin, but he didn’t seem to notice. “You ever use Star level tech before, Q?”

“No, I haven’t, Mister- ah, Tony.” Tony started unhooking the breastplate from the mannequin, handing the confused Sorcerer the gauntlets after he pulled them off the arm. “I thought all Star level gear was experimental, fitted one-to-one for the Sorcerer it was designed for.”

“Correct. Hold this?” Tony added the breastplate to the pile, continuing to speak as he made his way to a set of drawers and pulled out the set of boots that had been stored there, placing them on the large table in the middle of the room. “Normally I have the demo armor made for the Seventh, then make any tweaks necessary and send it along for the rest of the squad. Luckily,” Tony eyeballed Beck before opening another drawer to find the cape that went with the set, “you and Graysmith look like you’re about the same size, so you should fit into the armor I built for him. You know, it’s really bad form to send a different Seventh at the last minute.”

“I’m... sorry?” Beck looked at him with such confused but sincere contrition, still carefully balancing the gear that Tony had piled in his arms. Tony rolled his eyes. 

“You can put the armor down on the table. J, you got his measurements?”

To his credit, Beck barely flinched as JARVIS’s voice spoke through the speakers to confirm. “Indeed I have, Sir. You were correct. Seventh Beck’s measurements do indeed nearly match that of Sixth Graysmith’s. Only minor adjustments will be required for the demo armor to fit him. I have sent the relevant information to your screen.”

“Excellent. Q, you’ve heard of JARVIS, yeah?” Tony sat down at his work bench, beginning to make the adjustments to the gauntlets that the readouts suggested. They really were very minor, Tony was surprised to find. The major adjustments would probably come from the channeling equipment once he got the Sorcerer suited up and running tests.

“I’ve heard that you had an AI.” Beck carefully put the armor he was holding down on the table before moving around to stand behind Tony, watching what he was doing with curiosity.

“J, Q. Q, J. Please don’t stand there. I don’t like people looming over my shoulder as I work.” Beck took a few steps back, hands in the air as he tried not to antagonize the genius while he worked, eventually making his way over to where Nat sat.

She hadn’t moved since she had taken her seat on the low couch, her legs crossed, apparently disinterestedly scrolling through something on her phone. Tony must have noticed Beck looking at her, and waved a hand vaguely in their direction. “Nat, Q. Q, Nat.”

Nat offered a hand to Beck, who took it cautiously. “Agent Romanoff. On detachment from Enhanced Battalion Two.” 

Beck nodded. He had heard of the famous Black Widow after she had saved Stark’s life a few years prior, but there was still a little bit of trepidation there. She didn’t look like much, but Beck knew that in their line of work appearances could be deceiving. “You here to protect Stark from me?”

“My job is to protect Tony from all threats, even if they may not look like one.” She held his gaze for a moment longer before finally dropping both it and her hand from his grip. “Besides, I find first-timers reactions to this place more interesting than most things the television shows these days.”

“Fair enough.” Beck shrugged, still somewhat unsettled by how closely she was watching him but not willing to say anything about it.

“Alrighty, Q, try that on for size.” Saved by the bell. Beck turned his attention back to Tony, who had spread the pieces of the armor across the table from the metallic green undersuit to the fishbowl helmet. All that was missing was-

“Where’s the cape?” Beck looked around curiously, surprised to not see the second most recognizable part of a Sorcerer’s armor behind the helmet.

Tony gestured to a screen set into the table. “Need your pattern.” He cut Beck off as the Sorcerer tried to explain that he had been a Seventh before, he had a pattern, “Trust me, I’ve seen your old one. This is Star Squad! You Sorcerers are all about your appearance. You need one that doesn’t look like it was designed by a twenty-year-old fresh out of training.”

“Well I was a twenty-year-old fresh out of training,” Beck muttered under his breath, but walked over to the screen anyway where his old cape design was displayed. It really didn’t take many tweaks, tightening up a few lines, removing or moving other bits and pieces before Tony patted him on the back.

“Now, that looks like something that a fashion-conscious Sorcerer would wear. Nice going, Q. Knew you had it in you.”

“Thanks?”

“Now,” Tony shoved the armor on the table towards Beck. “While the cloak is fabricating, why don’t you go get changed?”

Beck awkwardly picked up the armor from the table, maneuvering his way towards the adjoining bathroom to the lab. The armor was a little lighter than he was used to, fit a little differently than the set he had worn with only minor adjustments over the last few years, but even without the cape and with the helmet tucked under his arm, this armor looked incredible.

That impression seemed to be mutual between him and Tony as he walked out of the bathroom, the inventor whistling low under his breath. “Looking good, Q. How’s it feel?” 

Beck extended his fingers, allowing a few sparks of magic to float around his fingers. “Feeling good, Tony.”

And he did feel good. Maybe, just maybe, he even felt like he might have a place on Star Squad after all. He was so distracted by the new armor, however, that he missed Tony’s next question.

”Sorry, what was that?” Beck looked up for a moment as he fiddled with one of the gauntlets, adjusting how it fit on his arm.

Tony rolled his eyes. Should’ve known that a brand new Star Squad Sorcerer would be distracted by his level of tech. “What’s your callsign, Q?”

”My what?” Beck stopped messing with his armor and walked over to Tony, looking at his screen over his shoulder. “Wouldn’t it just be Star Seven?”

Wow, this guy really was out of the loop. “Do you not pay any attention to how Star Squad works?”

Beck shrugged. “Never has much reason to. I’ve never been Squad lead, even of one of the lower squads, and they’re the only ones that Star Squad talks to.”

Tony swipes a hand over his face. “Think of it like your branding to the public. Like a superhero name. You know, like Graysmith is known as ‘Artist’ and Warren is ‘Distraction.’ That sort of thing.”

”Well maybe I’ll just be a man of mystery and not have a callsign,” Beck said with an eye roll of his own, “Keep the spotlight off of myself.”

”You know, that’s not bad.” Tony gestured towards Beck with his stylus.

”What, ‘Man of Mystery?’ Seems kind of long, doesn’t it?”

Shaking his head, Tony walked over to the fabrication chamber in the lab and pulled out the heavy woolen cape, helping Beck put it on as he spoke. “You’re right. What about Mysterio?”

Tony lead Beck over to the full-length mirror set up in the corner of the lab, letting him look at himself in the full armor. Beck carefully put the fishbowl helmet on, looking at himself carefully. 

“Mysterio. Yeah, I like that.”

With a knowing smirk, Tony opened a nearby cabinet and pulled out a bottle of Champaign, pouring three glasses. “Not every day I get to help name a Sorcerer.”

Beck carefully pulled off his helmet, placing it down before accepting the flute. “So you just have Champaign hidden all over your lab?”

”For special occasions,” Tony said with a shrug, passing the third flute off to Nat. “To Mysterio! May you not die horribly on your first mission.”

The three lightly tapped the flutes together. “To Mysterio.”


	2. Collapse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for discussion of major character death. This is a Tony Stark centric oneshot, taking place during the Battle of New York City vs Fire in 2012.

Stark Tower collapsed in a cloud of fire and ash, and so did Tony Stark’s life. It was only the autopilot feature in his armor that kept him from crashing to the ground along with it, JARVIS’s concerned voice tinny in his ear overlapping with the comms chatter of Sorcerers, armoured Enhanced, and their support staff desperately trying to strategise, to herd Fire back towards the swath of destruction it had already cut through New York City.

But Tony wasn’t hearing any of this, as the only sound he was paying attention to was the ringing of a phone he had frantically sailed as he landed on the top of a pile of rubble.

It went to voicemail. “You have reached the voicemail box of Pepper Potts. If this is an official Stark Industries call, please direct your inquiries to our main number at-“

Tony cut the call before the recording could finish, lifting off towards the rubble of the tower. “J? Give me the status of Miss Potts’ life signs.”

In all the time since Tony had created JARVIS, he had never known the AI to hesitate. He did now. “J?”

”Life signs are negative, sir.”

No. No, that couldn’t be right. Pepper wasn’t even supposed to be in the Tower that morning, he had asked her to come in to go over the final paperwork for the Tower’s construction. The building had been standing for less than a week, the grand opening was supposed to be in three days...

It was a small miracle that very few people were supposed to be in the tower, Tony would have thought if his mind wasn’t completely fixed on Pepper. “JARVIS, elaborate.”

“Sensors indicate severe blunt force trauma immediately prior to cessation of life functions. I’m... I’m sorry, Sir, but Miss Potts is dead.”

Tony arrived at the pile of rubble, desperately scanning for any indication of Pepper’s phone signature or life signs. The tower was nothing but a twisted pile of concrete and melted steel and glass. “J. Any life signs?”

”Negative, Sir. Tower security records put seventeen employees on the premises at the time of collapse. No life signs are currently detected.”

”Pepper’s phone?”

Another hesitation. “I am still picking up a signal. Follow the indications on your HUD if you would like to attempt to did it out.”

”Fucking hell, J,” Tony growled under his breath, “yes I would like to try to dig her out.”

It was tricky work. Tony muted the calls coming in from the Battalions, calling for any any available forces to come and help, please, help, save what civilians are left in the path of the Elemental, focusing on his one task.

He had to have hope. Pepper couldn’t be dead, she just couldn’t. If she were dead that meant it was his fault, that meant that he had caused the woman he was coming to realise was the love of his life to die because of some stupid paperwork that he had put off until the last minute. 

Tony could handle a lot, but he didn’t think that he could handle that.

And then there she was. Rubble had crushed most of her body, leaving her bloodied and barely recognisable before Tony scanned her. 

And his life collapsed before his eyes.

-

Time passed. The funeral was beautiful, well attended. Everyone who had known Pepper had loved her. Tony gave a beautiful eulogy, although if anyone had asked him what he had said after the fact, he wouldn’t have been able to answer.

He threw himself into his work. What else was there?

Well, there was the alcohol, of course. By virtue of being Tony Stark he had only ever had a tenuous grasp on sobriety at the best of times. Pepper had been the one to help him hold on during the worst. Without her, it was like that thread had been cut, leaving him flailing in the dark against the weight of the hopes and expectations placed upon him.

James Rhodes quietly stepped up as the leader of the Iron Legion, deftly deflecting any questions as to when Tony Stark, the first Iron Man, their leader since the beginning, would be returning. 

No one knew the answer to that question, least of all Tony.

One day, deep in an alcohol and coffee induced fugue state hidden in his lab working on the latest upgrades requested by the Sorcerer Battalions for the average soldier (nothing fancy, just more mass producible versions of the Star level tech two generations prior) the elevator doors opened and two people stepped out.

Tony looked up, unsure at this point whether what he was seeing was a hallucination or not. “Are you real?”

”We are very real, Mister Stark, although the fact that you needed to ask that question suggests that we should have taken this step much sooner.” The speaker was a man, dark skinned, an eyepatch over one eye. Tony tried to force the sticky gears of his brain to spit out a name, but came up with nothing. He got a similar lack of response for the woman with him. Red hair, pale skin, dressed in a dark uniform that the engineer in Tony recognised as an Enhanced Support duty uniform.

”Who the hell are you, and how the hell did you get in here?”

”Apologies, Sir.” Tony sighed as JARVIS spoke over the loudspeakers in the room, “Director Fury convinced me to activate the Own Good protocol that Miss Potts had you install. If you’ll mind me saying so, I’ve been quite worried about your well being.”

”Et tu, J?” Tony redirected his attention towards Fury and the still unidentified woman. “Must’ve had a good argument to get JARVIS to betray me. What do you want?”

”Stark, this is Agent Romanoff. She has been assigned as your bodyguard for the foreseeable future.” Fury gestured towards the woman, who took a few steps forward and offered a hand to Tony.

”It’s a pleasure to meet you.” Tony looked at the offered hand until she eventually dropped it. 

”Bodyguard or babysitter, Director Fury? Are people nervous I’m going to do something stupid and rob them of their best weapons designer?” Looking down, Tony pulled a bottle of scotch from the cabinet of his desk, not pausing as he poured himself a generous glass.

”Do you need a babysitter, Mister Stark?” Agent Romanoff looked like she was considering whether or not to knock the alcohol away from him, eventually deciding not to.

”Don’t need a babysitter. Don’t need a bodyguard either. Don’t you know who I am?”

Fury crossed his arms over his chest, raising an eyebrow. “And when was the last time you actually wore the suit?”

It had been two months, four days, and three hours. Tony knew this number exactly, given that he had taken the suit off the moment he had found Pepper’s broken body, and vowed never to wear it again. “I don’t know, and I don’t care,” he said instead, lying.

”If you don’t know how long it’s been, then it certainly can’t act as a viable option for self defense. Hence, Agent Romanoff will be here to protect you against any threats against your life.” It went unsaid that Fury knew that the greatest threat to Tony’s life right now was himself.

”And how long until I’m deemed capable of taking care of myself?”

Fury gave Tony a long look over, shaking his head slightly. “You successfully fly your suit in a fight and we’ll talk.”

With that, Fury turned to leave and Romanoff made her way across the room to the low couch against the wall, carefully picking up and moving the various detritus that had accrued there over the past two months before giving up and deciding to perch on the arm of the couch instead. “I am sorry for your loss,” she murmured, so quietly that Tony wasn’t even sure if he heard it.

But as he looked up, briefly meeting her gaze, he almost believed it. This wasn’t the trite apology of a coworker who felt bad but had no idea what he was going through. “You’ve lost people.” It wasn’t a question.

Romanoff nodded.

”Tell me about them.”

And she did. And somehow, while sharing their pain over the next few hours, Tony’s glass of scotch went almost untouched.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise this is happening for a reason. Not killing off Pepper just because I felt like it. There is a purpose to this.
> 
> Still sucks tho, doesn’t it?


End file.
